Ejo的英文诗歌

李盛

Ejo的英文诗歌

  by Derick Burleson

  The Kinyarwandan word which means both yesterday and tomorrow

  World resolves itself

  in crowded crane's

  liquid eye, in the cry

  of ibis, eye that's gazed

  on anyone who's ever walked

  this path beneath acacias, through

  coffee fields to the river

  and back again carrying water or fish.

  Cry that cries the morning news.

  Come, let's walk this path

  together, empty handed, carrying

  nothing back but a few words

  of a language powerful

  enough to turn the river

  back on itself, to fill the river

  with bloated corpses.

  One day I swam far

  into Lake Kivu, a thousand

  feet of clear water below

  and nothing above except sun.

  My body suspended on

  surface tension, the line

  between air and thicker air,

  sun the point from which

  the water swung. Yesterday

  I swam. Now I'm back home.

  Tomorrow Remera will swim

  out into that same lake, almost

  across the border, gut shot,

  gasping, almost there, almost. . . .

  Crowned crane wears

  a slash of crimson at the throat.

  Beneath its golden crest, beneath

  its liquid eye, the path winds

  through coffee fields

  to the river and back again.

  Fathom yourself in exile.

  In every gurgle of each

  morning's pot of coffee

  you hear your brother's last

  breath. You wake in a forest.

  You've been shot. Get up,

  stagger down the path

  to the river full of corpses.

  In its ancient terrible cry

  (fling your body in)

  ibis pronounces how

  beginning becomes the end.